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It's hardly shocking that the most fully realized characters in "The Casual Vacancy," J.K. Rowling's first novel for adults, are the youngest. Fats Wall, Krystal Weedon, Gaia Bawden, Andrew Price, Sukhvinder Jawanda: Even the names are vaguely reminiscent of those in her “Harry Potter” series, and when “The Casual Vacancy” focuses on these teenagers and their interactions (with one another, with their parents, with the petty hypocrisies of adult society), it takes on if not an urgency then a momentum of a kind. The problem is that they are too infrequently at the center of this novel, which revolves around a small English town called Pagford...

Related "Carl Hiaasen" Articles

It's hardly shocking that the most fully realized characters in "The Casual Vacancy," J.K. Rowling's first novel for adults, are the youngest.Fats Wall, Krystal Weedon, Gaia Bawden, Andrew Price, Sukhvinder Jawanda: Even the names are vaguely...

Chomp: A Novel
Carl Hiaasen
Alfred A. Knopf: 304 pp., $16.99, ages 10 and up
South Florida is known for many things: Alligators, orange groves and the writer who spins the area's most sensational attributes into even more sensational story lines, Carl...

There's much talk -- too much, if you ask some people -- about how to make sure young people will read books in our technological age. Heartening results come by way of the young adult section in bookstores (cf. Rowling, J.K. and Meyer, Stephenie) which...

Like gold standard writers Elmore Leonard and the late Donald Westlake, Joe R. Lansdale is one of the more versatile writers in America. Over a span of 30 years, he's written well over a dozen mystery, suspense, western and sci-fi novels and short stories...

Out this week, just in time for Octoberfest, is "Drunk: The Definitive Drinkers Dictionary." The book contains no fewer than 2,964 synonyms for "drunk." "The English language includes more synonyms for the word 'drunk' than for...

In real life, good things happen to bad people, but Carl Hiaasen, an Old Testament moralist disguised as a comedian, arranges things differently in his novels. Retribution, hilarious but often gruesome, hounds the vacuous celebrities, crooked pols and...

The environmental movement may not yet have changed the world, but it has certainly changed the world of children's books. Hardly a science or nature book for kids fails to sound a warning about habitats, species and resources in danger. Where 10 years...

Out this week, just in time for Octoberfest, is "Drunk: the Definitive Drinkers Dictionary." A sleek, gray hardcover of manageable size, the book contains no less than 2,964 synonyms for drunk. "The English language includes more synonyms for the word ...

Ever gone out and felt, well, not casters-up, not entirely not nearly blotto, but some kind of subtle gradation of drunk? Perhaps you'd find exactly the right turn of phrase in the new book 'Drunk: the Definitive Drinkers Dictionary,' out this week -- it's got

Elizabeth Gilbert, devastated after her marriage failed, went to Italy, India and Indonesia to recover and to try to rediscover something about herself. Her immersion in food, faith and the paradise of Bali sounds like a pretty good start at ...

Carl Hiaasen (pictured, center) signs books after speaking at Track 16 Gallery in Bergamot Station on Tuesday night, when he graciously answered my questions in front of a full room. It was part of the new Live Talks Los Angeles ...

Mona Simpson's "My Hollywood," a layered, literary take on motherhood and nannyhood, enters the L.A. Times bestseller list this week at No. 11. Simpson, who lives in Santa Monica, told Susan Salter Reynolds about what inspired her to create Lola, ...

Although what's hip in Hollywood changes faster than you can say "paparazzi," there's one destination that's been consistently starlit since it opened in 1931: the Chateau Marmont hotel. That's why it makes it into the title of Lauren Weisberger's new ...

I don't know what the secret of "The Secret" is, but I know that the book's popularity has driven author Rhonda Byrne's new book, "The Power," to the top of our nonfiction bestseller list. "Rhonda Byrne reveals the single greatest ...

Tony Blair has been chalking up the frequent flier miles. On Monday, he was in Philadelphia, accepting the 2010 Liberty Medal. Tuesday saw him being interviewed in New York by Katie Couric, and on Wednesday, he was in Massachusetts, talking ...

Jonathan Franzen and his new novel, "Freedom," top our fiction bestseller list for the third week running, keeping perennial bestseller Stieg Larsson at bay. Larsson's Millennium Trilogy is doing fine -- "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" is at ...